Surprise!
by Crazylobo
Summary: Weiss finds that newfound strength can be a liability when Myrtenaster grows too light for her. This however, does not escape a certain scythe-wielder's notice.


The song of birds chirruped in through the window, interwoven with the rays of the cascading morning sun. It was Christmas Eve, and the peace in the unusually empty training room was broken only by the clack of heels.

A lone white figure strode with purpose towards the rocket pod which housed Myrtenaster and its sheath. Drawing the sword with her right hand, the heiress registered an immediate _wrongness_ with her weapon. She narrowed her eyes and glared at her weapon, swishing Myrtenaster once in a wide arc on her right side before switching the sword to her left hand and repeating the motion. Frowning, she stepped forward with a flurry of sharp thrusts and quick jabs before swinging Myrtenaster from left to right in a wide arc and finishing with a side-step into her default _en garde_ position, with her arm held out in front of her.

It wasn't enough for her to reach a conclusion.

Incredulous, she parried an imaginary opponent before pivoting on her left foot and lunging into a front roll. As she recovered from her roll, she threw a few more jabs and thrusts with her sword – _neck, chest, stomach_ - before she lowered her weapon.

No, she wasn't mistaken.

The balance was perfect, something it has not been since her strength had increased from training with it over the course of several gruelling months at Beacon Academy.

The enormous strength she had gained from fighting numerous Grimm from her field trip with Professor Oobleck, alongside the regular sparring with her teammates, had forced her to re-evaluate each one of her strikes as of late, so that they would be neither too far nor too wide.

Myrtenaster had, in short, become too light for her.

Of course, this was not the first time that she had outgrown her weapon. Although Weiss had been the one to design her weapon, it had been crafted by the finest sword smiths and forges that money could buy. When she was at the Schnee manor, she only had to make an offhand comment in the presence of her father before sword smiths would kneel before her, adjusting Myrtenaster's weight and any other part of her blade she saw fit to comment on.

But, she was at Beacon Academy now. With the numerous classes and missions that they have been sent on, Weiss has not had time yet to ask her father to commission the sword smiths to adjust her weapon to favour her newfound strength, and she did not have the skill to do it on her own. And it had not been a problem at first, with Blake and Yang hardly noticing the minute changes in the heiress's fighting style despite their spars.

Until she had commenced practice sparring with Ruby, that is. Unused to Myrtenaster's weight, Weiss's parries were just a little too slow, and her reactions just a little too late – and she had found herself at the mercy of Crescent Rose and a grinning Ruby.

Puzzled, she paused to examine Myrtenaster. The sword gleamed proud and sharp in the sunlight, and Weiss absently made a mental note to thank Ruby for polishing and sharpening Myrtenaster for her. The pommel was a little heavier than before, Weiss noted, and she decided to clack open her Dust chamber.

She gasped. Her Dust chamber contained a brand new stainless steel revolving mechanism, and upon closer examination, she noticed that the hammer and trigger had also been replaced. The new piece of stainless steel was plain, without the intricate and elegant carvings she was so used to seeing. A sense of dread overcame her as she snapped her chamber shut.

Someone had tampered with her weapon.

Weiss reasoned that a damage assessment was only prudent before she reported back to her father. Mustering her courage with a sharp inhale, she spun the revolver to several colours, only for her eyes to widen at how the new mechanism had a higher torque and rotated to her chosen colour in less time than her old one had.

The person who had tampered with her weapon had known her use of the rapier, known the weaknesses associated with it, and sought to correct them. The fencer reasoned that this person cannot have had evil intentions.

Experimentally, she fired out her Dust combinations with Myrtenaster, and marvels as how the Dust travelled further than she remembered, and how it seemed to coalesce at a particular spot rather than a more diffused range, as she had been used to for so many years. Oh, yes, this would fit her high-precision fighting style quite nicely. The heiress swung her weapon a few more times in delight, moving through her practice motions with a new ease that left her breathless and flushed as she became one with her weapon. As she twirled around to finish the last set of drills, she caught sight of the rocket pod containing Crescent Rose. Although she could not see it, she imagined that it was gleaming, even in its compact form.

_There's only one person who could have done this_, she thought as she sheathed Myrtenaster and marched out of the training room. There was only one dolt who was so in love with weapons that it bordered on savant.

As soon as she reached the dining hall, she marched towards a familiar red hood that was busy stuffing herself full of pancakes laden with butter and rivers – no, lakes, Weiss decided with a wince – of honey.

"I know what you did, you dolt," Caught between childish delight for her improved weapon and anger at having her personal weapon violated, her voice came out harsher than intended.

At her words, Ruby stopped chewing and turned to face her with puffed up cheeks.

"Mmm erhmm mm hmf pmf mngh," came the coherent reply.

"Ugh. I can't understand you. Swallow first, then we'll talk." Weiss regretted her instructions almost immediately when Ruby nearly choked on her food in her haste to swallow.

"Slowly, you dunce! You'll choke if you try to swallow that much in one go!" Weiss reached up to pat Ruby on the back, anger forgotten in lieu of worry. Blake's bow twitched as she glanced over at them in concern, but her eyes flit back to her own share of pancakes as soon as she affirmed that Ruby was all right.

Ruby eased up on her swallowing and remembered to chew. Her silver eyes were focused on the way Weiss had folded her arms and the way she was tapping one arm with her fingernails. Moments later, Ruby gulped down her last bite and chirps a "Good morning, best teammate!" with a sheepish smile, eyes upturned.

She cuts to the chase. "I know what you did last night."

"Whoa there! _What do you think my little sister did last night?_" Yang shouted, both her hands planted on the table. Did the room get hotter? Weiss blinked. Yang's eyes were red.

"It's okay, Yang. I didn't do anything last night. Weiss is - Weiss, what _did_ I do?" Ruby's head swivelled between Yang and Weiss.

"It's not what you think, Yang!" Weiss huffed, fighting the red rising to her cheeks in vain as she glared back at the standing Yang. "Get your head out of the gutter."

Yang sat down, but not before motioning to her own eyes with two fingers, and then to Weiss with a single index finger. "I'm watching you, Schnee. You better not mess with my baby sis." Blake rolled her eyes, her lips curved upwards as she tilted herself forward to rub soothing circles on Yang's back.

With the attention turned away from the red and white members of team RWBY, Ruby piped up. "Um, Weiss, you still didn't answer my question."

Weiss drew Myrtenaster in reply, and Ruby's eyes widen in understanding.

"O-Oh, Myrtenaster! Uh, um, uh, I noticed in our last fighting session that i-it was kinda too light for you, and…" She trailed off, carefully watching Weiss's reaction.

"…And?" The heiress scowled. In her delight at Myrtenaster's new upgrades, she had forgotten the reason why her young leader had noticed her flagging behind combat practice: she had not been as careful as she had thought.

"Um, I'm sorry I touched Myrtenaster without your permission, Weiss," Ruby squirmed in her seat, misinterpreting Weiss's scowl, and began wringing her hands in her lap. "Um, see, I couldn't help myself when I saw this new Dust chamber floating around in my favourite magazine and I thought that I could modify it so that it'd fit Myrtenaster and so I replaced the hammer and trigger too, and I know it's not as shiny as your old ones, but - um, do you like it?" Ruby's verbal vomit ended in a high-pitched squeak reminiscient of a puppy's whine.

Weiss thought that her silver eyes were not much different from Zwei's: large and vulnerable and full of trust. It was no wonder that she had succumbed to Zwei the very day he had arrived in the mail, bright-eyed with wagging tail and drooling maw.

"I suppose I didn't not like it." Weiss let go of her anger with a sigh, knowing that deep down, Ruby would break Crescent Rose with her own two hands before she ever damaged another weapon on purpose. "I was going to send it for repair anyway, but you've saved me the trouble. But _please_, tell me next time if you're going to upgrade Myrtenaster."

Weiss hardly had enough time to finish her sentence before Ruby erupted. "_Really_?! Oh my gosh I'm so glad that you like it!" Weiss's lacklustre reply had not dampened Ruby's reaction in the slightest as she fist-pumped in the air with a large grin on her face, missing Weiss by inches.

"Can I show you Myrtenaster's new features? Please oh please? I promise you'll really like it!" Ruby had an eager grin etched from one corner of her ear to the other, her silver eyes sparkling.

Yes, Weiss thought with exasperated affection, just like Zwei.

"I'd be indebted to you if you could." Weiss curtsied in front of Ruby, who only tilted her head at the heiress's reaction. Although she was already familiar with most of the new upgrades, it would not hurt to have a firsthand account of the changes from the engineer-in-charge herself.

"Okay, okay! I'll be right with you as soon as I finish these pancakes!" Ruby wolfed down her pancakes in record time, chewing furiously. Both Blake and Weiss watched Ruby eat, their stony expressions mixed with a splash of horror and a smidgen of detached fascination. Weiss turned to Yang, her mouth still open in a small O, and Yang only shrugged.

"She's a growing girl. Whaddaya expect?" She deadpans, rising to bring her tray as Blake followed her. It was with this last comment that the black and yellow partners of team RWBY exited the dining hall, no doubt to enjoy the season's festivities on their own.

The partners found themselves in the training room again as Ruby rattled off the newest features on Myrtenaster, Dust chamber in her hands.

"I changed out her Dust revolver with this new model that would allow it to spin 10 revolutions per minute faster than your old one and I replaced the spring so that the chamber would stop perfectly at where you want it to, and oh!" Ruby said, barely able to stop herself from bouncing on the spot. Her silver eyes gleamed with an enthusiasm that she rarely showed for anything other than strawberries, cookies, and milk.

Ruby clacked the Dust chamber open. "I almost forgot – I also replaced the Dust firing mechanism within Myrtenaster, so now she can fire Dust at higher speeds and with higher precision, too. The precision of the old model was 90%, but with this one, it's 99%." A small smile inched its way towards the corners of Weiss's lips as she listened to Ruby.

"I also cleaned out Myrtenaster and sharpened her edges – did I mention that she's a beautiful sword much like her owner? – and oh, there's one more feature that I forgot to mention! It's this new brand of Dust which I helped to reload for you with a lower activation time, so you can freeze enemies immediately, without having to perform your usual glyph circles - " Weiss did not hear the last feature - her mind had screeched to a halt.

"Wait. You think I'm beautiful?"

Ruby tore her eyes away from Myrtenaster long enough to glance at her partner before looking down. "Um, did I say that? Ahahaha, well… I meant it, Weiss," she says with a tentative, uncertain smile, pink dusting her cheeks.

To be called beautiful and to have her weapon cared for so intimately filled Weiss with warmth that seemed to overflow from within her chest to the very tips of her toes. Overcome with emotion, the heiress hesitated before reaching out to wrap her arms around Ruby's shoulders, only for the latter to stiffen in her arms. The scent of roses filled her nose, and Weiss found it strange that the scent seemed only to warm her heart further.

"I… Weiss?" Unlike her earlier tirade, Ruby's voice was timid.

"Thank you, Ruby." Weiss said, her voice soft and warm with gratitude.

Ruby beamed and brought her arms up to wrap around the fencer's back. "You're welcome, Weiss! That's what teammates do for each other!"

A pang of guilt jolted through Weiss, as she realized that what she has gotten for Ruby this Christmas could not compare to what the scythe-wielder had done for her.

"No one's ever done this for me before." Weiss whispered. "I can't ever repay you,"

If Ruby was not so close, she would never have heard the last part of the statement. Ruby only smiled in response as she squeezed Weiss tighter to her. "You don't have to, silly. Merry Christmas, Weiss."

"Merry Christmas, Ruby."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note:<strong> The idea of upgrading weapons is hardly novel, and I admit that the original thought was inspired by a number of talented fanfiction writers. Still, I like to think that I've offered a different take on this, despite having rushed this in more than several places.

It came as a shock to me to when a mere draft of 100 words spiralled out of control to 2000+ by the time I was finished. Although 2000 words might feel very short to read, it certainly took a tremendous effort to write and proofread!

Of course, if and when Ruby marries Weiss, Ruby would happily modify her Dust chamber, so that a rose insignia would be visible when the chamber is clacked open.

**Disclaimer**: RWBY belongs to Monty Oum and Roosterteeth. All bad prose, poor grammar, and lousy characterisation featured in this fanfiction is, however, mine.


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